Abstract: Elaine Lavin
Mentor: Dr. Schulz
Our lab’s previous research has generated a large data set assessing a number of dimensions of emotions during interactions in which couples talk about incidents that had upset one of the partners. These data include participants’ continuous ratings of their own emotions during the discussion, physiological data on the participants during the discussion, participants’ descriptions of what they were trying to achieve during different parts of the discussion, and observational ratings of the participants’ emotionally expressive behavior. My goal is to explore new ways of assessing how the participants managed their emotions during these interactions. I am working to manipulate the data to represent particular moments of emotional regulation in graphical ways that lend themselves to future quantitative analysis. Ways I am analyzing emotional regulation include looking at couples’ overall emotional balance, the relationship between participants’ stated goals and emotions during high affect moments, and how long it took for participants’ emotional states to return to baseline after particularly negative or positive emotional moments during the conversations. We have follow-up data on over half the participants that will allow me to look for a relationship between the ways in which I operationalize emotional regulation and the future success of these couples’ relationships.